The Curse of Power Point

I will admit, back in the days when I was giving talks, Power Point seemed the way to go.

Years and years ago, one made up one's slides on paper and sent them to the institution photographer who took a week or ten days to get back to you with a bunch of white-on-dark blue slides. They looked like blueprints. They were always sort of second rate.

Next, one generated slides on the computer using Power Point (circa 1988-89) and plugged a slide machine into the computer to transfer the slides to film, which then was developed. One always made a few mistakes that were irrevocable.

Finally, as this caught on, we had the video projectors. Just make the slides in Power Point and project them from the laptop. This has led to all sorts of things like dynamic slides with words dropping in from nowhere to little animations and movies. All very cute.

Enter Christmas and Kids:

In hopes of receiving exactly what she wants for Christmas this year, Katie Johnsen, 11, created a Power Point presentation to show her parents what's on her wish list.

Back in the dark ages (1960's) the reigning guru was Marshall McLuhan. He famously wrote a book, Understanding Media:

McLuhan's most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is also a pioneering study in media ecology. In it McLuhan proposes that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study -- popularly quoted as the medium is the message. More controversially, he postulates that content had little effect on society -- in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example -- the effect of television on society would be identical. He notes that all media have characteristics that engaged the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but (at least until the advent of the videocassette) a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.

Professor McLuhan died before Power Point became extant, but I wonder what he would have had to say about the power of Power Point to change the way we discourse. No longer does one "talk" at a lecture. One gives, well, points. The more powerful the better. It is not a question of conveying information allowing the person attending the lecture to make their own decision. It is convincing them of your point. Thus the "power."

And so it has evolved to children convincing their parents of to get them goodies using "power."

Have you seen any kids in line for Santa with a laptop in hand?